The importance of sequencing and administering prescription medication cannot be over-stressed. Improper administration of prescribed medication is reportedly one of the most common causes for non-response to medical treatment. Frequently, patients forget to take their medication, especially when the administration schedule is complex. Complications can arise when a patient attempts to "catch up" on missed medication by taking additional medication during the next scheduled medication administration. Moreover, since the rate of absorption or detoxification of various drugs may vary widely or may be cumulative, insufficient time between dosages may result in serious side reactions, especially in the nervous system, the cardiovascular system, the respiration system or even the gastrointestinal track. Therefore, it is important that the patient follow the proper medication administration schedule.
By far the largest problem faced when following a medication administration schedule is remembering exactly when to take the next prescribed medication dosage. This is especially true for complex administration schedules or elderly patients who do not have sufficient mental alertness to keep track of the administration schedule. Further, some medications interfere with the mental processes thereby making it difficult to remember the proper administration schedule or schedules.
Traditional drug distribution techniques found in nursing homes and hospitals also suffer from a number of significant problems. In nursing homes and hospitals, it is not uncommon for a particular patient to be prescribed several different pills with different combinations of those pills to be dispensed at a different time of the day. It is usually the responsibility of the nurse to chart and dispense the pills to each patient according to complex personalized administration schedule. Often, though it is poor practice, the nurse will dispense pills to all the patients in the ward, after which, from memory, the pills dispensed to each patient will be charted. This practice may ultimately result in poor patient care or an increased cost to the patient or the hospital
One attempt at solving these and other problems has been single compartment pill containers of the type that are typically provided by a druggist. These single compartment pill containers have no provision for the orderly distribution of the contained medication according to a complex administration schedule. Furthermore, with the advent of child proof containers, these druggist provided containers are frustrating and difficult for dexterity challenged patients to use.
Another attempt, used especially when the patient takes a variety of medications, is a segmented container that segregates the different types of medication into different compartments. These segmented containers, however, are not adapted to hold the medication in an ordered arrangement according to a complex distribution schedule. Also, such pill containers are generally small and require frequent replenishment. Further, there is the possibility that a person may confuse like looking pills, resulting in incorrect dosages being taken or placed in each compartment.
A further device is a pill container that includes a cap that has a manually operated timer. After a pill is distributed, the timer is reset for the next pill distribution. However, cap mounted timer are not effective when a variety of different pills need to be distributed over a complex distribution schedule since the patient must still remember the time difference between each pill distribution and which specific pill is to be distributed during each distribution.
Perhaps the most well known timed mediation dispenser is the blister pack used with oral contraceptives taken on a daily schedule. The blister pack has an array of plastic blisters defining individual compartments for each pill. A frangible backing sheet, which is successively numbered, lies behind each compartment indicating the order in which the pills must be taken. However, many medications are to be taken at a specific time each day and this dispenser does not provide a reminder for the time of day.
There are pill storage containers that have been developed to hold a patient's supply of medicine and remind the patient when to take the medicine. For example, Hicks et al., in U.S. Pat. No. 4,275,384, discloses a portable medicine cabinet with a timer and individual compartments for pill containers. This device alerts the patient when the medicine in a particular canister should be taken, and the patient then physically removes the canister from the cabinet, determines the prescribed dosage and manually removes that dosage from the canister, repeating this process for each canister as often as pills are required to be taken from that canister.
Another example is U.S. Pat. No. 4,223,801, issued to Carlson, which discloses a multi-compartment pill container that can be filled with one day's requirement of prescribed drugs. Each individual compartment is capable of holding pills of different types, and each individual compartment is illuminated when the pills therein are to be taken by the patient. This device is controlled by a timed alarm and a timer reset switch that is depressed by the patient after taking the required medicine. However, this apparatus does not dispense the medication but requires an individual to pick pills out of the compartments by hand. Because the timer reset switch is more easily accessible than the pill storage compartments themselves, a weary patient is tempted to simply press the reset button to stop the alarm without taking the medicine.
Thus, the prior art abounds with examples or rotary and like pill dispensers but these, in the main, suffer from one or more drawbacks resulting from the multiple requirements that the instrument be simple, convenient, low-cost, durable and capable of functioning over an extended period of time divided into dosage intervals and particularly wherein the intervals require more than one kind of pill.
However, to date, there is no simple, dependable means for administering various medications according to a complex distribution schedule that is available to those taking medication. It would therefore be a decided advance in the art to provide a drug dispenser which would automatically dispense and advise a patient exactly when to take a specific pill from a series of pills that are to be taken over the course of a day.
For the purpose of this description, the word "pills" is used as a representative term for pills, capsules, tablets, pellets, and like forms of medication, and is not intended to limit the scope of the invention in any way.